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Monthly Archives: August 2014

Announcing Con Movie Watchalong Wednesdays! A series of nine classic con films, hosted by the BFF (@Sonia_P_L) and me (@RoseLerner) on Twitter. Most of these are movies I haven’t seen and I’m super excited to discover them with you! We’ll be watching every other Wednesday starting September 17th and ending when my con artist book True Pretenses releases in January. We’ve staggered the times so hopefully folks on both coasts will have an opportunity to join in.

Watch the movies along with us and chat about them on Twitter using hashtag #cmwaw.

Schedule (summaries from imdb.com):

9/17/14, 3:30PM Pacific/6:30PM Eastern: “The Music Man” (1962).A con man comes to a Midwestern town with a scam using a boy’s marching band program, but things don’t go according to plan.Trailer

10/15/14, 3:30PM Pacific: “Anastasia” (1997), with the voices of Meg Ryan and John Cusack. The last surviving child of the Russian Royal Family hooks up with two con men to reunite with her grandmother, the Dowager Empress, while the undead Rasputin seeks her death. I feel like this is misleading because it doesn’t make it sound like a con! And also be prepared for me to rant a lot about the Romanovs. But whatever. The point is, DMITRI. I fell so hard for Dmitri when I saw this in theaters. That nose! Trailer

11/12, 3:30PM Pacific: “The Rainmaker” (1956), starring Katherine Hepburn and Burt Lancaster. Lizzie Curry is on the verge of becoming a hopeless old maid. Her wit and intelligence and skills as a homemaker can’t make up for the fact that she’s just plain plain! Even the town sheriff, File, for whom she harbors a secrect yen, won’t take a chance—until the town suffers a drought and into the lives of Lizzie and her brothers and father comes one Bill Starbuck…profession: Rainmaker! Yes, please! Trailer

11/26 (Thanksgiving Wednesday!), 6:30PM Pacific: “The Grifters” (1990), a Martin Scorsese-produced thriller starring Anjelica Huston, John Cusack, and Annette Bening. A small-time conman has torn loyalties between his estranged mother and new girlfriend—both of whom are high-stakes grifters with their own angles to play.Trailer

12/10, 3:30PM Pacific: “Six Degrees of Separation” (1993), starring Will Smith, Stockard Channing, and Donald Sutherland. “An affluent New York couple find their lives touched, intruded upon, and compelled by a mysterious young black man who is never quite who he says he is.” Um, okay. Way to leave out the best part which is that Will Smith is passing himself off as Sidney Poitier’s son! Trailer

(One list that we used as a resource while planning this series remarked: “My high school staged a production of the play in which ‘Sidney Poiter’s son’ was played by a pale red head. Didn’t quite work.” I totally recommend reading the list. The compiler evaluates each movie based on the verisimilitude of the cons portrayed.)

12/24 (Christmas Eve!), 6:30PM Pacific: “The Brothers Bloom” (2008), starring Rachel Weisz, Mark Ruffalo, Adrian Brody, and Rinko Kikuchi. The Brothers Bloom are the best con men in the world, swindling millionaires with complex scenarios of lust and intrigue. Now they’ve decided to take on one last job—showing a beautiful and eccentric heiress the time of her life with a romantic adventure that takes them around the world.

This movie was the direct inspiration for True Pretenses because I loved it but I HATED the ending. I knew it was coming for the whole film, it was obviously the only thing that could happen, and I still desperately didn’t want it to happen. Trailer

And wrapping up on 1/14/15, 3:30PM Pacific with “The Sting” (1973), starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. In 1930s Chicago, a young con man seeking revenge for his murdered partner teams up with a master of the big con to win a fortune from a criminal banker. I haven’t seen this but David Maurer, author of The Big Con (another book I drew on while writing Pretenses) sued Warner Brothers for $10 million dollars, claiming that they plagiarized his book in the screenplay. (Apparently the suit was settled out of court for $350k.) Trailer

Lady Serena Ravenshaw is one of London’s most prosperous women, but she’s never forgotten the misery that set her on the path to success. Nor has she forgotten the drunken young gentleman who gave her the means to start her long, tortuous climb out of the gutter. When he knocks on the door of the Ravenshaw Arms to ask her help in retrieving a stolen family heirloom, she readily agrees to help, and to let him stay rent-free. After all, Serena prefers debts to fall in her favor.

Still grieving the death of his twin brother, Solomon Hathaway just wants to be left alone in his dye-making shop—until his highborn uncle sends him to the infamous Lady Serena to scour London’s underworld for the missing bauble. He’s shocked to discover she’s the same bedraggled waif to whom he once gave his entire quarterly allowance. Yet as they delicately tread common ground, they must negotiate a treacherous world of crime, espionage and betrayal before they can learn to trust—and love—again.

The book was in and out of print pretty quickly because of the Dorchester disaster, and I’m thrilled that it can be read again! To celebrate, I’m giving away 5 Lily e-books and a fantabulous gift basket (not literally. There is no actual basket)!Continue reading →

Hello everyone, and welcome to my blog! I’ve done a round-up of some of my own favorite posts over the years (both here and when I’ve guested at other blogs), for people who are visiting for the first time:

In November 1788, Eleanor Smith confessed to her husband, William, a Northumberland clergyman, that she had been unfaithful and that their youngest child was in fact fathered by her lover. Eleanor and the little boy went to live with her mother and by November 1790 William had gained a separation. Yet he paid maintenance to Eleanor and 2s a week towards the child’s support. Interestingly, when William died in 1812, nearly twenty-two years later, he left no will and Eleanor, described as his widow, was appointed as administrator.

How would you like to see this show up in a book? I always love brought-together-by-a-will plotlines, even when they’re totally ridiculous from a legal standpoint. Some thoughts:

1. The hero is Eleanor’s son by her lover. When Eleanor must return to administer William’s will/estate, he falls in love with William’s poor orphaned niece, who has been serving as William’s hostess and now has nowhere to live.

2. Eleanor is the heroine, and the hero is William’s lawyer. (Is the lawyer also her lover from so many years ago?)

3. The heroine is William’s oldest daughter, whose family was torn apart when she was a little girl. Now she’s reunited with her mother and half-brother and must untangle her complex feelings about the past…I assume she has a long-term suitor she hasn’t been able to trust because of her conflicted feelings about marriage.